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January 16, 2004 03:12 AM

Broken: Cliches in writing

The newly released 2004 List of Banished Words lists the most overused cliches of the last year.

I take exception to the crack about "in harm's way," a historic phrase dating back over 200 years from the U.S. Navy; otherwise, it's a good list of things that are "broken" verbally in news stories and common usage today.

Posted in Current Affairs

Comments:

There was a bit of a discussion on alt.coffee about this. "Hand-crafted Latte" made the list, and some people are correctly offended by the "modern day equivalent of a soda jerk" reasoning for its inclusion. A properly prepared espresso drink is not a simple endeavor. A bad one, of course, can be.

Posted by: Todd McKinney at January 16, 2004 11:43 PM

Expressions? Does this hard drive have sufficient space to list all the dopey/inaccurate expressions we've become bombarded with over the past decade or more?

Tied for first in my opinion are

- "No problem" instead of "You're welcome". Especially idiotic when a store clerk uses it after they haven't been able to help you with your problem (ie looking for a product or a solution to something).

- The deliberately vague and grammatically hideous "Significant other". Any time someone uses that, I find myself unable to resist asking "Other what?", but most people aren't bright enough to see what I'm driving at.

Posted by: S. Wolf at May 25, 2004 01:33 AM

Give up on the significant other thing. BTW, there is a difference between "S"ignificant other and "s"ignificant other.

Posted by: Sido at September 6, 2005 08:57 PM

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